Forbes:
Although we are not (yet) witnessing a U.S. dollar crisis, the Bretton Woods II system is still at the center of the debates on the origins of this crisis. Understanding the nature of this crisis is fundamental in order to understand what reforms need to be undertaken for this not to happen again--and to understand what the global economy will look like after this crisis.
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Why did I read this? I don't give a rat's patootie about China.
CALL FOR JUSTICE!
Save Our Country=Properly identifies Financial Improprieties & Exploitative Acts
Punishes=Financial evi1 like Blue Co11ar Crime=Burg1ary, r@pe and m_rder
He!nous Acts=Go unpunished because they are "Financial" rather than Physical?
People Escape Justice=Because attended Ivy League School rather than Community College? Justice=For all!
Create=New Humanitarian Capitalism that rewards Honorable Merit rather than Gamesmanship Penalizes=Ruthlessness, Deception, Exploitation, and Fraternally Protected Incompetence
To Accomplish=Decent People Must Unite across Ideo1ogy, R@ce, Re1igion, Geography, Class
Act NOW w/Prudence=Day coming=Laws NO longer tolerate Uprising against corrupt masters
People Who Care=Must make Larger Commitments to Organize for political/institutional redress
The Bilderberg Group meets in May, and by what we see our elected officials do and recommend and submit as legislation, we'll then know what they decided an called for also what the NY Times editorializes....that's the real power and who Geithner fears and serves Summers too...
CALL FOR JUSTICE!
Save Our Country=Properly identifies Financial Improprieties & Exploitative Acts
Punishes=Financial evi1 like Blue Co11ar Crime=Burg1ary, r@pe and m_rder
He!nous Acts=Go unpunished because they are "Financial" rather than Physical?
People Escape Justice=Because attended Ivy League School rather than Community College? Justice=For all!
Create=New Humanitarian Capitalism that rewards Honorable Merit rather than Gamesmanship Penalizes=Ruthlessness, Deception, Exploitation, and Fraternally Protected Incompetence
To Accomplish=Decent People Must Unite across Ideo1ogy, R@ce, Re1igion, Geography, Class
Act NOW w/Prudence=Day coming=Laws NO longer tolerate Uprising against corrupt masters
People Who Care=Must make Larger Commitments to Organize for political/institutional redress
Roubini is of course correct to point our the structural trade imbalances as the major cause of our current crisis and that this is on nobody's agenda. But I am not really sure what Roubini suggest we ought to do to address this issue. I don't think this situation can be changed entirely through monetary means. In the US case the main culprit is unsustainable levels of imports which cannot be changed unless we start producing more in this country. But American corporations are at the forefront of creating "free trade" framework mainly for their labor arbitrage. Without addressing this key issues there are no real solutions. We can talk about free trade among nations of similar standard of living but to continue with the current system of labor arbitrage is ultimately suicidal. We must introduce some kind of social tariff to protect American workers. We could collect such a tariff and then give the money to the country on which products we've imposed the tariff. Some other solutions might be more preferable but one fact is certain - we cannot continue with the current system. It will impoverish this country, ruin its currency and at the end destroy global trade.
The global elites will profit for a small time more and the middle class will collapse in the US. Then there will be peonage and nobility of money. It's really about power. The wealthy elites in all countries are now pitted against working people everywhere. Inside the US, the social contract has been ripped up by "free trade" which is a British idea.
The free trade and labor arbitrage will result in worldwide economic disaster for the vast majority of people in the world, and that is just fine with the financial elites. In fact, they can weather the storm and even make more money during the downturn, crisis, depression, collapse or whatever you want to call it.
Here is what president Grant had to say about free trade:
“For centuries England has relied on protection, has carried it to extremes and has obtained satisfactory results from it. There is no doubt that it is to this system that it owes its present strength. After two centuries, England has found it convenient to adopt free trade because it thinks that protection can no longer offer it anything. Very well then, gentlemen, my knowledge of our country leads me to believe that within 200 years, when America has gotten out of protection all that it can offer, it too will adopt free trade.” (quoted in Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America by AG Frank, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1967).
http://www.david-morrison.org.uk/other-world/ulysses-s-grant-free-trade.htm
The situation can't be changed ENTIRELY by monetary means, but the monetary part of the problem needs to be fixed too. It would really help if we had a stable currency once again.
I agree that monetary policy must be fixed. The problem is that the wrong solutions will be implemented in this area as well. American elites have stopped thinking in terms of what is best for America - the nation; they only care now about "global" economy. In fact they have theories that "tell" them that this isn't even possible. The American government has deteriorated to a mere arbiter of competing business interests. Public interest, commonweal, commonwealth is not even to be found in their vocabularies. We are who we are because of predominant thoughts our elites hold. Believe you me those beliefs do not take into account us - the vast majority of working stiffs in this country. At the moment We the People are utterly irrelevant.
After they rob us blind and the system still collapses their solution will be an international currency which, they will promise, will solve all those problems with trade imbalances in one swoop. The problem is we will not have much of a country left. Globalist capitalism will then rule the world through the world central bank with even less oversight from anyone.
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| 04/30/09 09:03 AM